


the ambassador

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Confessions, Daisy using humor to deflect, Emotional Support, F/M, Flirting, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 02:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9528863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Coulson picks a weird moment to ask her out on a date.(Written because I bet Coulson likes Daisy in a suit)





	

Something about the back of the collar. Too stiff. She can’t stop messing with it. Or maybe she is just nervous, waiting in the… well, she doesn’t know how this room is called, just that it’s the equivalent of a green room for fancy, official buildings. She’s been in many of these. Waiting rooms. Always kind of cold and uncomfortable, even when luxurious. Lots of sparkling water in neat bottles. She touches the jacket again, the uncomfortable feel of new clothes.

“You don’t have to be nervous,” Coulson tells her, following her fingers as they try to fix wrinkles in the fabric that aren’t there. “You’ve done this before. Talked to these people before.”

“Yeah but never as official…”

She makes a gesture. She can’t bring herself to say the word. It feels unearned. And ridiculous in front of Coulson. He knew her when she was technically homeless. He knows she’s not this, she’s not an-

“Ambassador?” he fills in, saying the word like he believes it belongs to Daisy by right. It’s nice, it makes her feel a bit better about all this. But only a bit.

“We’re not a country,” she protests. “We are a people. We shouldn’t need an ambassador, not in our own countries, as if Inhumans were foreigners, no matter where they were born.”

Coulson smiles, like he’s humoring her rants, except he never looks like he is _just humoring her_. He looks like he is listening.

He touches the small of her back for a moment. _Do I look that stressed?_ Daisy wonders.

“Maybe there shouldn’t be an ambassador,” he concedes. “But in the meantime it’s a good thing it’s you.”

Daisy looks up from obsessively checking that her suit looks good.

“Thank you,” she says. She means it.

He’s right about something, though. She would probably hate if anyone else was doing this, if she had no control. She had watched too many people claim they acted in the best interests of Inhumans, only to further their own.

Coulson reaches out, touches her jacket, right over her hip, like he is checking the fabric. This is the second time in two minutes he touches her, Daisy thinks. She wonders what’s up with that.

“It’s a new blazer,” he comments, like he just noticed what she is wearing. “It’s not the usual red one.”

She frowns, a bit wrong-footed that Coulson of all people could tell what she usually wears. But yeah, she thought she’d changed her usual suit for DC hearings, the one she’d been wearing for about two years.

“I wanted something more serious this time,” she says. Something darker. In fact what she has been thinking is that she wanted to look older - which is absurd, she’s thirty-one, but Daisy also knows that a woman in her early thirties is often seen as not mature enough in the Capitol, among these politics waiting to have any excuse to cut down funding for Inhuman projects, or looking to recover the worst, now-gone, articles of the Sokovia Accords.

“It’s a nice color,” he says, and he’s obviously being nice. “If you want I know a place in town for tailor-made suits for events like this one,” he adds. He gives her an amused smile. “I can hook you up.”

“Thank you,” Daisy says, running her hands down the lapels of her obviously not-tailor-made suit. Actually she would love for Coulson to introduce her to that world, because she knows he’s a dork about all things suit-y and she’s sure she’d have a good time tagging along. “I might take you up on that offer yet.”

Coulson smiles, looking pleased.

Then Daisy makes a couple of faces, biting her bottom lip, knowing there will be cameras out there - there always are - and that she will have to keep her expression neutral. Which, for the record, is something she hates about official politics, as opposed to the politics she used to do with a podcast from her van. This whole never showing passion thing, as if it’s a good thing, as if politicians who act like they don’t care are somehow more trustworthy. She’s not into it. And it still feels weird to think of herself as a politician, but she guesses that’s what she is now.

“You’ll do great,” Coulson says, like reading her mind. “You always do great.”

“Yeah and every time before a meeting I’m sure this is the one. I tell myself, _today they’ll find out_ ,” she admits, sighing. She hasn’t really told anyone about her pre-performance jitters. Not something she has to worry about when she’s shaking bad guys against walls, there she just acts, no thinking. This is all about thinking. What if she is no good at that? Just because her missions with SHIELD had made her famous, that doesn’t mean she has any right to speak for the thousands of Inhumans that-

“It’s called impostor syndrome,” Coulson tells her, interrupting that line of thought. “It’s normal,” he says, matter-of-factly. “More so in someone with your past.”

Daisy raises an eyebrow.

“Hey. Just because you’re my team’s senior profiler doesn’t mean you can go about profiling your superiors,” she teases.

“You’re only technically my superior.”

They exchange a chuckle. Phil Coulson is an unruly, temperamental subordinate, she has to keep him in check.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sounding worried that he might have stepped into personal territory. She shrugs. She’s never talked about it with him, not directly, yet of course Coulson knows better than anyone what’s on her file, and how to interpret it.

“Do _you_ ever get impostor syndrome?”

He gives her a sad smile. “Why do you think I know so much about suits?”

She returns the smile, and for a moment it’s not so bad.

She stares at the door. Anxiously. She’s done this before, but this whole new label, it’s like Coulson said, she feels like she doesn’t deserve it. And part of her thinks it’s a waste of time, even though it isn’t (it doesn’t advance things, but speaking in these meetings makes sure that Washington doesn’t take two steps back when it comes to her people - it’s essential but it’s also kind of Sisyphean… what? _she reads_ ). Part of her would rather have stayed in the base waiting for a mission, hacking law enforcement comms for anything that sounded SHIELD-worthy (or Quake-worthy, which is slightly different), or she’d rather be in the air, on the Z-1, between missions, which to her is nicer and more like home than the base, even. She’d rather be there, playing videogames with Mack, or keep Coulson company while he watches a movie (yeah, even the french ones), than here about to explain a bunch of stuck up why men why they have to be compassionate towards others.

She sighs.

“I wish you were coming with me,” she tells Coulson, half out loud, half to herself. When Coulson is in one of these things with her at least she can search for his face in the crowd when someone says something stupid, and he’ll have the offended expression Daisy wishes she was making but can’t because she’s Quake and all eyes are on her.

“That’s not like you,” he comments. “You don’t fear facing things alone.”

“I don’t,” Daisy replies, flashing him her cockiest smile. “But it’s always good having someone who’s got your back near.”

“On that we agree,” he replies. He throws a glance next door. “I’ll be watching you from the media room.”

Daisy doesn’t know if that makes her less or _more_ nervous. No, okay, she knows. It’s less. That’s why he said it.

“We can have some drinks afterwards, if you want,” Coulson adds.

That will make her feel better, she agrees.

“Sure, I’m going to need them,” she says.

“ _We_ can have a drink afterwards,” he repeats, waiting until she gets his meaning.

“Oh, _oh_ , okay,” Daisy nods, back very straight, heart in her throat.

Is he saying this to distract her? Is this for real? She’s scared that, despite his correction, she has misunderstood. She can feel a headache - no, like a nice version of a headache. Suddenly the world makes a little less sense, but not in a bad way.

“Is it the new suit?” she jokes, because that’s what she does, of course. “Do I look that good in it?”

“You always look good in a suit,” Coulson says.

Daisy steps back, impressed. With those moves she finds it hard to believe how little he’s dated over the years. Pot to kettle, Daisy tells herself, since she can’t remember the last time she…

“That should have been my line,” she tells Coulson, arching an eyebrow at his spotless dark suit. Then more seriously. “Years ago, that should have been my line years ago.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “You’ve been busy. _Madam Ambassador_.”

Daisy rolls her eyes at the tone. No respect for the authority.

Coulson glances at his watch, and then, again, casually, touches her elbow.

“I think it’s probably time,” he says.

Daisy stares at his hands. Does one thing have to do with the other? She is definitely not imagining things. They’ve been friends for six years, he is never that touchy-feely unless something is wrong.

“You’re touching me a lot today,” she points out.

For a moment Coulson looks like a kid getting caught doing something naughty.

“Do you mind?” he asks, perfectly smooth.

“No, no, I don’t.”

“Should I keep doing it then?” he asks, running one hand over her back shamelessly.

Daisy means to chuckle, but the noise that comes out of her mouth, the back of her throat, sounds more like she snorted. “That sounds like a question for after the meeting.”

“Good,” he says, nodding to himself, all serious with the wrinkles on his brow that Daisy is beginning to notice as cute just right now. “It’s a date then.”

She guesses it is.

The whole thing begins to sink in.

So they really are doing this, uh? After all these years. A date. Daisy wonders how it will go. Will they have drinks at the hotel or does Coulson have something different, maybe special, in mind? He has this stupid smirk on his face like he knows something Daisy doesn’t. Will they kiss at the end of the night? Will they have sex? No, Daisy never has sex on the first date - _oh shit, there will really be a date_ \- but she confesses she doesn’t exactly hate the prospect. But it’s Coulson, her Coulson, how can she go on a date with him?

In a way that’s more daunting and far scarier than a room full of high rank politicians set on fighting all her pro-Inhuman proposals. If she thinks about it like that the meeting doesn’t seem so challenging after all.

“Okay, I’m doing this,” she says, walking to the door, and not sure herself which she is talking about.

She is about to leave, but decides that it would be unfair, letting him keep the upper hand like this. So she rushes back to Coulson’s side, before he can react, throwing one arm around him, pressing her body against his - wow, the fabric of this suit definitely is stiff - in a way that it’s subtle, yet meant to make him uncomfortable. Well, a bit uncomfortable.

“Wish me luck out there,” she says, brushing her lips against his for a brief moment, not quite a kiss, and not quite _not_ a kiss. He’s shocked, isn’t he? Hey, he is the one who went and asked her out so smoothly. Payback.

He breaks into a soft grin, shaking his head as Daisy reaches the doorframe.

“I think I’m the one who’s going to need luck.”

Daisy nods slightly, closing the door behind her.

Outside she adjusts her jacket once more, this time smiling to herself.

Well, if he is going to be watching...


End file.
